Why are there no categories for multiplayer? In theory that could be done faster than single player, so there should be a category for each number of players

Multiplayer runs share the same leaderboard as single player. If you look at the current any% leaderboard there are several coop runs. If there were separate categories for 1p, 2p, 3p, and 4p, many past runs wouldn't fit in any of those categories because they switch between 1p and 2p.

Also, the rules state that the number of players during the run is allowed to vary. For example, the fastest way to complete Palace of Winds for a long time was to switch to two players (despite only one person actually playing) because (as far as I know) trials skip was only known to be RTA possible in multiplayer.

With that said though, I have always wanted to see a speedrun of FSA with multiple runners coordinated, that would be an amazing feat! Recently, duo runners Savestate and bliny have set a few individual level records in 2P mode, so maybe one day we'll see a full multiplayer run contest with the WR!

Before this speedrun website existed, we used to have the leaderboards on Zelda Speedruns.

Glyph and steel crocodile are correct. This was basically the same list currently seen for full any% runs that was transferred from ZSR but the difference was stating whether the run involved 1 or 2 players (setup for console was a nightmare with 3 capture cards and 2 GameCubes with Gameboy Player attachments but I did a co-op run as “26pointcrew” before most of the major glitches were discovered, especially using the boomerang). Also, there are some slight differences with using emulators, though I have only done a little bit of testing with Dolphin and mGBA.

Also, a little history, Navi and I were added as mods for the Four Swords Adventures section of ZSR after SGDQ. I wasn’t active during the time that Speedrun.com was being setup but Navi has been good about building the community and verifying runs.